Missouri Baptist Convention rejection of Acts 29 Roundup EXTRA!

No, it’s not Friday. In case you hadn’t heard, the Executive Board of the Missouri Baptist Convention has taken the controversial decision to withdraw already promised and budgeted funding to church plants affiliated with Acts 29.

At issue? As far as this redactor can tell, it is the secondary issue of Total Abstinence from Alcohol, and that Acts 29 churches are unwilling to preach an unscriptural form of teetotalism.

Southern Seminary bloggers have produced a flurry of blog posts on the topic, and I want to present them here in a special, dedicated edition of the Roundup.

Alcohol schmucahol. Its about getting enough money to rent a hall and sound equipment.

Change the focus social club based meetings to able-to-meet-anywhere organisms and the money trail becomes a non-issue. And hence Acts29 and Missouri won’t have anything to fight about, and the church gets to proclaim Christ as it should.

As a member of an Acts 29 church plant (Crossing Church), I have to say that this is a sad day in the SBC. However, though Scott was a little harsh in his comments, I can’t say that I totally disagree with his assessment. Acts 29 plants typically do require a lot of money at startup due to the sound equipment, projector , etc. I can’t help but feel at times that Jesus would have given that money away to the poor in His community and used an acoustic guitar for worship. My church does very little of that, but will spend the money to maintain the equipment. Acts 29 (and my own church) is doing some great things, but I think the emphasis on being cool and relevant sometimes distracts from the excellent missional focus of the movement. I would like to see more a more “organic” community as well. However, Acts 29 is a great organization and I’m excited to see Mark Dever speaking at a Boot Camp.

Sorry for being late to the game, but been holding my precious little boy for the past two days. Thought I’d chime in for what it’s worth . . .

Here’s an observation I recently thought about regarding this issue. The Episcopal church has recently split over crucial issues such as homosexuality, and all the churches which leave the denomination, the $$$ in buildings are in the hands of the denomination; ergo, churches lose assets, buildings, etc.

In the SBC, controversy does not arise over homosexuality (thanks to the Conservative Resurgence) but rather over the unscriptural demand for total abstinence (again thanks to the Conservative Resurgence)–and this over a $200,000 loan for a building!

So on the one hand we have much to be grateful for in that the SBC isn’t being divided over homosexuality.

On the other hand, we have much to lament that we are being divided over alcohol policies.

We have avoided the ditch of liberalism but somehow fell into the ditch of legalism.

Is one ditch worse than the other? Is this what post-1979 SBC has become?